


Of The Recent Dead

by SoundandColor



Category: Bletchley Circle
Genre: 1950s, F/F, Lesbian Character, Post Season/Series 01, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-12 00:12:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoundandColor/pseuds/SoundandColor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Millie thought of secrets, of a gun in her hands. She thought that power unacknowledged was power just the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of The Recent Dead

After what happened in the Oakwood woman’s cellar ( _she was shaking, her hands slick with sweat but she didn’t hesitate and the gun never slipped. Not once_ ), Millie left a note for the three of them, some cash for Lucy and took off.  She didn’t care where she was going, just bought a ticket for the train set to leave the soonest and found herself on her way to Greece within an hours’ time.  

-

Millie had been with men before, lots of different men for lots of different reasons, but it was the women she remembered. The curve of their necks, the way they carried their purses tight against their sides, the way they always came alone. She remembered the way they shook beneath her hands, their sweat, their smell, their skin. Their gasps, sharp and thrilling in her small room, she remembered the way they refused to meet her eyes afterward.

She thought of secrets, of a gun in her hands. She thought that power unacknowledged was power just the same.

-

A block from the train station, Millie rented a small room and got a job pouring drinks in the bar below it. She toured Greek landmarks, smoked cigars, bought postcards she refused to send. The air was almost always dry and hot, the sky a clear blue, she went to the seaside daily but rarely swam. She picked up girls there. Ones in two piece suits with bright red ringlets. Ones with olive skin and jet black hair down their backs.

She took them to her room and closed her eyes when they touched her, tried not to imagine someone else.

-

The first time Millie saw Susan, there was nothing about the woman that begged a second glance. A plain oval face shoved into a book and topped with a fall of curls that would’ve been pretty if they were more chestnut instead of mud brown. Her gaze actually lingered on Lucy before sliding away: too young. Then there were maps to be read and codes to be broken and when she looked up a month had passed and she’d barely slept but she’d never felt so vital in her life.

Rest was a rare thing in Bletchley Park, but Millie couldn’t get her body to wind down and left the bed after a half hour of trying. Susan was in the common area, kneeling on the floor and dividing her attention between a tattered book and scribbling on a sheet of white paper. Though Millie was still relatively new here, it had only taken minutes in Susan’s company to realize the woman was brilliant. That her grasp of numbers, of patterns, of seeing things no one else could was both awe inspiring and jealousy inducing.  

She looked down at her for a moment, curious, before asking. “Tea?” Susan’s head popped up quickly but at the sight of Millie, she relaxed and smiled wanly. “Yes.” She finally answered. “That would be lovely actually.”

Millie walked to the kitchen and began heating the water, gathered two cups, spoons, some milk and enough green tea for two. By the time she went back into the room, Susan seemed to have forgotten she’d been there at all, all of her attention focused on the small book.

Millie sat her cup down gently, curled up in the high back chair to Susan’s left and quietly watched her work over the rim of her drink.

-

That’s where it started.

-

It hadn't ever been a front page story and Millie guessed that was why she’d missed it all these months ( _that or  she hadn’t wanted to see it. Hadn’t wanted to deal with what it could mean_ ) but there was another murderer lose. Some maniac killing school boys in the North and throwing their bodies into the mines.

She read the article twice over before she went to the library and read anything written about the case in past issues of the local paper. There wasn’t much. Greece had it’s own problems and there was very little space to devote to a foreign killer. She sat at her dressing table for a moment, knuckles gone white in a clench, before she pulled out her shears and clipped the latest blurb free.  She stuck it in an envelope and debated with herself on whether or not to write a short note as well.

 

 

_~~I apologize for my abrupt absence but have you read about these boys?~~_

_~~How are the three of you? I am well but I’ve heard some disturbing news.~~_

_  
_

She decided almost immediately to cut out the small talk, Jean (because that’s who she would be addressing this letter to. Practical, no nonsense Jean who saw more than she’d ever say. No one else was an option) wouldn’t appreciate it anyway.

 

 

_Has Susan seen this?_

 

A week later, she received a response.

 

 

_Yes. We could use an extra set of hands._

Millie tore the paper in two and walked downstairs for a drink.

-

The woman she took home was blonde with full lips done up in red, a tight blue sweater with white trousers, heels an inch too high to be tasteful and a ring on her finger. She wasn’t coy either, she knew what she wanted and she wanted Millie. It felt good, being pursued, kissing her. Even the smell of her perfume ( _the same as Julie’s scent, the one Millie traded for on the black market, the smell of a dark cellar behind an abandoned building_ ) couldn’t put Millie off. She kissed her harder even, pulled off her own clothes because she couldn’t wait anymore.

That was what she needed to stop thinking: of the war, of murder, of desperation, of Susan in a bed right next to hers but a million miles away, of a girl trapped under the rubble with a monster. Millie felt the cool metal of the band around the woman’s finger against her inner thigh ( _While you’re fighting and dying, who do you think’s screwing your girlfriends?_ ), and bit her lip until it bled.

-

Millie was in love with Susan ( _she could admit it to herself if she couldn’t quite admit it to anyone else_ ) and Susan loved Millie but she knew better now. She’d seen how love could eat its own tail. How it could warp and become something ugly.

She could imagine Crowley beneath those stairs with the dead girl he wanted for so long. It wasn't easy, but it was possible. On those long, sleepless nights when she couldn’t stop thinking of home, of Susan in her neat little house, it was almost like falling into a dream. Julie’s skin would be cold, her eyes dull. Everything about her he loved already long gone but her body would still there, wouldn’t it? And when you’ve been living off nothing for so long, even a shadow of something can be enough. It can be everything.

Bile rose in the back of her throat at the thought ( _at the certainty_ ). She’s knows him. After all, Susan isn’t a killer, but Millie and Malcolm are.

-

For better or worse, Millie is free. Free to travel, to put herself in danger, to ruin her own life, to sleep with strangers or betray a friend.  She had no family to consider, no belief in a higher being to guide her, nothing but her own conscience and desires. Children were being slaughtered but she had herself to consider, her own well being as well as theirs. She dressed quickly and quietly and was long gone before Blondie ever woke up. The train station would be opening soon, she needed to buy another ticket.


End file.
